Quote:
Originally Posted by Freiwillige
Yea often lend lease is under represented when it comes to Russia. I read an article somewhere that summed it up like this. It wasn't the tanks and planes that made the largest contribution although they helped, It was the little things that people tend to forget such as Radio sets for the soviet tanks, fuel, rubber, metal alloys and probably the largest factor was trucks. We sent them so many trucks that they virtually mechanized their entire army over night!
Operation begration would not and could not have happened if it wasn't for the trucks.
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I'm not going to argue about the whole Lend-Lease thing because people who have already made up their mind that lend-lease singlehandedly saved the incompetent Russians aren't going to be convinced by my internet ramblings. However, I will say the one thing which the numbers can prove, and this is that (As I said before) the amount of trucks received by the Soviets in Lend-Lease constituted a far smaller percentage than the amount of trucks that were produced by the Soviets themselves or received through other means. Therefore it couldn't possibly have been "We sent them so many trucks that they virtually mechanized their entire army over night!", since if anything they mechanized (Motorized, technically) themselves and Lend-Lease merely constituted a sizable help.
As for Operation Bagration, it could easily have happened. There were massive offensives conducted concurrently with Bagration in Karelia, Poland and Romania; a diversion of resources from any of these could have given Bagration the same amount of trucks as it had historically without Lend-Lease. While the destruction of the Germans on the Eastern Front would have certainly taken longer, it would still have been achieved.
EDIT: Also, apparently the majority of these trucks also arrived after 1944, with nearly half arriving after Bagration was already underway.